Postal III
Postal III is a third-person shooter video game developed by Running with Scissors, Inc.. It is the third game in the Postal series. It was released for Microsoft Windows in December 2011. Releases are planned for Linux and Mac OS X. PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 ports were announced in later stages of development, but it has recently been revealed that a lack of budget is holding these ports back. Gameplay Postal III continues and expands upon the sandbox-style design of its predecessor, Postal 2 (no sandbox only missions), as well as including motion captured performances by a wide array of minor celebrities, including Ron Jeremy, Jennifer Walcott, and Randy Jones, and appearances by Uwe Boll (director of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_%28film%29 Postal film]). The game also contains fictional appearances of Sergei Mavrodi, Osama bin Laden and Hugo Chávez. Plot In Postal III, The Postal Dude emigrates to Paradise's sister town of Catharsis as he previously blew up Paradise with a nuclear bomb. Due to the economic meltdown, the Dude drives into town and becomes stranded because he can not afford a tank of gas. He must then find work and do various odd jobs to escape the town. Through the course of the game, the player can choose one of two paths: the "bad path", which includes joining in on the schemes of Mayor Chomo and Uncle Dave, or the "good path", which involves the Dude joining the Catharsis Police force. The game plays out in a fairly linear and cinematic way, although the player's actions effect the outcome of the story and the game. Although the "good path" is more difficult to play, it offers more story line and a longer campaign. Development Unlike its predecessor, Postal III is not based on the Unreal engine but rather on the Source engine. Also, Postal III is a third-person shooter, in contrast to the earlier entries in the series (Postal 2 being a first-person shooter and Postal being an isometric 2D game). Early gameplay footage of Postal III being played at E3 2008 revealed new weapons such as "The Badgersaw", a nail bat, an M60 machine gun and the return of the gas can and matches from Postal 2. A new weapon concept is a test lab monkey which reacts to a laser being pointed by the Postal Dude. Product manager Mike Jaret revealed in an interview that there will be "special vehicles" in the game such as Segways. Postal III was developed under the working title Postal 3: Catharsis until October 18, 2006, when the finalized title was revealed to be Postal III. In a 2010 interview with Joystiq, Running with Scissors founder Vince Desi said that the game would likely be released in the first quarter of 2011. He added, "It's in the final stages in Moscow, I don’t think it will come out this Christmas." In a late 2011 interview with QuickJump Gaming Network, level designer Tim Wambolt revealed that the development team does not have enough money to hire a studio to do console ports of the game at this time. Release The game was initially released for Windows on November 23, 2011 in Russia. It was supposed to be released on December 21, 2011 worldwide in downloadable form on Steam. However, for unknown reasons the Steam store never made the game available for purchase, and eventually removed it from its game listings. The game can still be purchased from Direct2Drive, GameFly and the Running With Scissors official store but still requires Steam activation. Postal III is now available on Steam. Austrian game distributor Gameware released two boxed editions on December 23, 2011. Reception Rating aggregation site Metacritic found Postal III to be critically slammed, with an average review score of 24 out of 100. Gamespot gave the game 3/10, while Gameinformer magazine also lambasted the game, giving it a score of 1/10 and saying that "the people behind Postal III don’t have the writing ability to back up their gutter-dwelling mouths. As it turns out, they also don’t have the design or programming chops to create a stable game.". This makes it one of a handful of games to ever receive such a low score. In a more positive review, QJ.Net stated that the game was "one of the most interestingly written, psychotic and harmful games I've ever played" and that the developers had "ended up with a product that looks good, sounds great and is often funny", but also complained that their "experience was marred with constant crashing and a lot of graphical glitches" as well as complaining that it often comes off as "mean spirited and lacking in heart". Original Gamer gave the game a rating of 7.5, deciding that it was "a good game, just not a great one". The reviewer praised its storyline, wide variety of weapons, and creativity while deriding the games "linear level design and gameplay" and complaining that it takes "a while to get to the meat of the title". It also called out the games use of good and bad paths, which he believed unfairly favoured the good path, deciding that the game "punishes you for being bad, by being bad itself". That said, it concluded by saying that the "fun is there in Postal 3, you just have to work a little for it." Developer Reactions In an interview with rebelgamer.de about a month after release, Vince Desi, the head of Running with Scissors admitted that the "fan reaction has been mixed" to Postal III, as well as stating that most of the complaints centred around the game having "too many bugs." Desi acknowledged that it was hard for him to hear from "diehard fans and hearing their complaints", but did however emphasis that the developers have been "making updates to fix a lot of the problems" as well as stating that people who purchased the game at that time would have a "much better experience." He also commented that while RWS had "designed a very big challenging game with great variety", their development team and publisher "were under tremendous pressure and decided to release a different game, something that they could deliver." He did however note that he was "glad that the publisher has tried very hard to make the necessary improvements" following the games initial reception. He also commented that they were committed to making "sure that gamers get the best value they deserve" from Postal III. Links *Official website *Official forum Category:2011 video games Category:Pc Games